The Political Economy of Workplace Surveillance

This book examines developments in workplace surveillance, and, most fundamentally, the implications it has for workplace power relations in the in the digital age.

Workplace surveillance has become one of the central mechanisms through which labour is organised under contemporary capitalism. From warehouse scanners and call-centre scoring systems, employee-monitoring software installed on home computers during the Covid-19 pandemic, and wearable health trackers to experiments with implanted chips and brain-monitoring devices, employers are increasingly able to observe, measure and evaluate workers with a degree of continuity and precision that was not possible in earlier periods. The book highlights that contemporary workplace surveillance represents both an intensification and a transformation of a much older project of disciplining labour. This transformation is made possible by new data infrastructures, but also by the longer erosion of workers’ protections and the spread of precarious employment relations. Bringing together Labour Process Theory and Surveillance Studies, and drawing on Marx, Foucault and recent empirical evidence from multiple authoritative bodies, this book offers an integrated account of how power operates in the contemporary workplace.

This book will be of much interest to students of surveillance studies, labour relations, sociology and international political economy.